continuity of care

It was a Saturday night, and I was on the vascular service, so being on call meant I was covering the vascular patients, plus urology, plus plastics. Which can add up to a lot, if the urology attendings have decided to do a couple of radical prostatectemies and urological reconstructions before leaving for the weekend. Or if plastics is on call for traumatic injuries. Fortunately, urology was quiet, and plastics was only on for hand injuries, of which there were none.

So when, around midnight, five or six ATV accidents started coming in in short order, I had time to go help. I had one end of the trauma bay, and I got the third helicopter transport, a young man, fairly alert, with some scalp lacerations, lots of bruises and lacerations everywhere else, and a mangled left leg. ATLS protocol, by the book, didn’t show much of anything – except for that leg. The foot was hanging at a strange ankle, and the foot looked quite pale compared to the other side. No pulses were palpable and he could only wiggle the toes.

The orthopedic resident was moving from one stretcher to another, distributing splints, and making notes for who would get to go to the OR first. He cocked his head at this one. “I’m not getting any pulses here, perhaps you guys should consult vascular.” “It’s ok, I am vascular,” I told him. I had already dug up the hand-held doppler, which is the mainstay of vascular workup in the ER: if you can hear pulses, it’s not too bad; if you can neither feel nor hear the pulses, then the limb is truly ischemic and will be dead within a couple of hours (6 is usually quoted).

The trauma attending finally had time to get to that end of the bay. “This is a pretty bad open fracture. Can anyone feel pulses? Maybe we should consult vascular surgery.” “Yes sir, I am vascular; I was just helping out down here. I think it’s bad, there are no dopplerable pulses, and we’re about to call our attending.”

The situation was fairly textbook: an open fracture with clear distal ischemia. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200 or any further studies, proceed straight to the OR. Since I had nothing better to do except sleep, I helped move the patient into the OR, and watched the orthopods fit the pieces back together and fasten them in place with an ex-fix (external fixator; like lego outside the leg; it stabilizes fractures, especially contaminated ones, for a couple of days, usually in preparation for definitive internal fixation; they’re cumbersome, and people often try to ignore their presence, but it’s actually easier for the patient if you move the leg by holding the ex-fix, since that won’t make the broken bones rub against each other, which is what really hurts).

Then, since my pager kindly remained silent, I got to help the vascular attending and chief (one of my heroes: smart, and good to work with), who were by this time fairly beat, since it was the fifth emergency case of the weekend. We prepped both legs, and the chief and I harvested the saphenous vein from the uninjured leg through a series of small incisions that we tunneled between to reach the whole vein, while the attending cleaned up around the injury on the other side, and found healthy artery on both sides for the anastomosis. He and the chief each took one end, and attached the saphenous vein to the healthy artery, while I started closing all the incisions on the other side. Ortho had already made the fasciotomies (long ugly slashes through the fascial covering of the four muscle compartments in the calf, necessary to relieve pressure and prevent ischemia after a serious injury or period of ischemia), so all we had to do on the injured side was wrap yards of kerlex and gauze around the entire structure of the ex-fix and our incisions, and we were done.

The poor vascular team still had two more cases to go, and I had to go attend to some urology patients about whom I had received no signout. It made for an incredibly long call day, but that was my favorite night to date: a dramatic, classical injury, which I got to follow from the door through the OR, and then round on for the next few days. Talk about continuity.